http://www.digitales-online.org/2002/

The dreamed bodies of machine-women - Cinematographic memento

From the "female machine" in textile factories to the secretaries tapping on their keyboards in offices, the cinema abounds in women's images associated with machines. Emerging at an archaic time which dreams of female automats submitted to the male authority, on its account the cinema again takes up this image that it gears down ad lib, such as the female clones and the fragmented women of Busby Berkeley's films. However, somewhere in this inevitable association, with passing decades which follow the technical and industrial developments of the century, the perspective changes and woman is transformed; reclaiming her own imaginaire, she extricates herself gradually from nineteenth-century-like shackles to become a complex body, both cyborg and goddess.
The aim of Cinematographic memento, a compilation of film extracts which belong to current productions as well as to those which appeared throughout the last century, is to provoke us into thinking about our current vision of the technological advances and on the transformation of "female machines".

Muriel Andrin, Cinema historian

Cet article a été écrit par Andrin Muriel, Cinema historian {murielandrin@hotmail.com} le 17/11/2002